I've been baking up a storm in anticipation for Christmas - I'm so thankful to Mattie for his vegan butter recipe (my white chocolate version is found here), as this stuff enabled me to make all my favourite Xmas goodies that call for margarine. With the allergy crap around here, this white chocolate stuff is the only thing that makes a sub! And given that everything is so sweet, it goes perfectly! This year's baking assortment is totally Kyson safe with no allergy stuff. I've made the usual gingerbread, orange carrot cookies, sugar cookies, ginger crinkles, etc. but I needed to have a few things to whip up quickly to satisfy a nearly-four-year-old's urge to constantly be busy baking something.
Enter bark! I used to make a chocolate one with Oreo's, but given the palm and soy content, those were a no-go. So I whipped up some alternatives...first, a bark with just melted Enjoy Life chocolate chunks (about 1 cup) with about 1 cup of semi-crushed PC Blue Menu Alphabet Pretzels (no soy or other vegetable oil - hooray!) then spread on a cookie sheet with wax paper and chilled in the fridge (of course, once chilled, broken into pieces). I honestly think this bark has the look and texture of a peanut bark - but is happily nut-free! The saltiness of the pretzels makes this super yummy.
I also used up some of my expensive Natural Candy Store order and made crunchy candy cane bark - this time, 2 cups of chocolate chunks (melted) with about 1 cup of crispy rice cereal and about 4 ounces of crushed candy canes.
I can't decide which one I love more!
I'm getting ready to book Kyson's allergy follow up for May 2012 and am already getting my hopes up that he will grow out of SOMETHING. If I had to pick, I'd love to have legumes back. Fingers crossed!
Hope you and yours have a very merry Christmas and all the best for 2012!
